over the pond.

In just two days time I am flying to America to start my year in Pennsylvania and I am ready. I know my parents do not believe that because I haven't finished packing, but I am.

Yesterday I had to say goodbye to Adam, the last big thing on my tick list, and now I am ready to go. There are other goodbyes to be said, other things to be done, but I now feel like I am done with England and am ready for my year abroad. Of course I have absolutely no idea what to expect, how I am going to cope with sharing a room, what I will eat for a year or how my classes will be, but that's ok. I didn't want to over think about everything before I went, build up ridiculous expectations or disaster scenarios in my head. Next year will be what it is.

I have my visa and my accomodation, my flights and hotel booked, I really am leaving on Monday.

I don't like being in limbo, I don't like the wait before new adventures and new experiences where you are just stuck at home wishing you could start right now. So I'm glad these last few weeks are done, that I can stop thinking about leaving and start thinking about living abroad instead.

I wanted this blog to be useful to people going on or thinking about a year abroad, I envisaged neat posts with lists of things to take, top tips and advice for applying for visas and navigating the embassy, but I couldn't do it. The posts I try to write sound false and forced, I am not an authority on these matters, I am not someone who has done everything right and who can loftily share my wealth of knowledge. So instead I write my thoughts, my feelings and silly things to do with my life. I want to share my year on this blog, but I no longer wish to focus on administration, facts and processes. This is where I want to share my life, and perhaps even that will be helpful to people who are going on or thinking about a year abroad.

In two days I arrive in the US and in three I will see my university in person for the very first time. It is terrifying and exciting and weird and wonderful all at once. I don't know who I will meet, where I will travel, what will be the highest and lowest points of the next ten months, but I do know that I want to experience them all fully, that I want to embrace this whirlwind crazy experience.

Wish me luck.

I often feel like I should stand up, shoulders back, a resigned but calm look on my face, and declare to all those I come in to contact with that my name is Sarah and I wrestle with social anxiety. I'd give a brief introduction, explain how, whilst I had always had some issues, as everyone has, with feeling welcome and present, that it was not until this year at University that I realised that they were a bit more than the average struggle and that it was something that was starting to get in the way of living my life. I'd shortly summarise Helen's quick and necessary intervention, the unhelpful doctor's appointment and the extremely helpful course of cognitive behavioral therapy that taught me how to understand the mental processes that my brain dragged me through. I'd then explain how I came to the end of my sessions and felt that, whilst I wasn't functioning on a wholly normal scale, that I had learnt to cope again, that I felt better. And then I'd crumple into myself a little and pull my shoulders up to my ears as I whispered that some days I don't feel any better, that it still manages to knock me sideways; sometimes when I expect it and sometimes when I don't. I'd apologise to everyone for not being able to control it, for sometimes being hard work, before slowly sitting back down, terrified that they had heard and understood and terrified that they hadn't.

Last week I took a train across the country to go stay with Adam in his sleepy seaside town, Felixstowe. As it is (somehow, crazily!) one of the last times I will see him until Christmas, I thought I'd bring my little samsung camera to document it. Despite the not-so-summery weather, it was a lovely week. Much to Adam's delight, I have a weird obsession with Felixstowe, having been landlocked for my entire life, and I love all the ridiculously English features and the way everything is just so... Felixstowe. It's hard to describe it, but it has its own atmosphere. I love everything about it, from the dodgy pier, arcades and Band Box to the string of worn, balamory-style beach huts along the sea front.

As this is my fourth visit, we have settled into a routine. We tend to walk all the way to the docks...



...beautiful.

And then walk the opposite direction to the ferry to get chips and tea.





Though this time we managed to get a lift to the cafe, so instead of being so exhausted by the walk that we just eat chips and then turn around and walk back, we wandered down through the fields by the Orwell River. When I first found out that Adam lived in Suffolk, I imagined rolling fields and farmland, so this felt much more like Suffolk!




Our exploring got us slightly lost and a kindly farmer pointed out that we probably should have stuck to the path! We ended up having to jump across a boggy ditch to get back to the golf course and, in time, back to the town.

Of course we also always spend time at the beach. We even went for a scarily expensive glass of wine at the Fludyer's Arms, a pub on the seafront, feeling a lot more classy than our usual Felixstowe nights out!




I absolutely adore Adam's green stripy beach hut, and on one of the few sunny days I dragged him there to go for a freezing but fun swim.





My final day fell on Adam's mum's birthday, so we hauled ourselves out of bed before midday and wandered over to the beach hut to join his parents for bacon and sausages and a glacial morning dip. It was like something out of 'About Time', the sea was completely still, the sun was softly shining and all of us were camped out on rusty deckchairs with cups of tea. Adam and I played a couple of aggressive games of swingball and he skimmed stones with his dad. It really was the perfect start to the day and end to my trip, lounging in a faded beach hut with a paper looking over a gorgeous sea view.

It hasn't hit me yet that these moments with Adam really are some of the last for a long time. Even though it is now less than two weeks until we fly out, it still doesn't feel real no matter how much we talk about it. Next year, next year, next year, that's how we refer to it. But it's not next year, it's this year, it's this month, and soon it'll be this week. And then, without warning, we'll be in America, thousands of miles apart. And I'll be dreaming of this week with my wonderful boyfriend in this very British seaside town and all our conversations sitting on the boardwalk or in the beach hut or drinking overpriced orange juice at The Alex. I'll remember the little birthday party in the Sunday sunshine and being held by Adam in the sea as he shivered and pulled faces.

We didn't doing anything big or special, no wild farewell pub crawl (that's next week!), no sombre goodbye meal, we just enjoyed being us in a place we both love.

Until next time, Felixstowe.

When Eoin snapped this candid photo of Adam, all I could see was me stressing, my odd profile scrunched up as I told him not to get involved in a strained voice. But instead of focusing on myself, what I should have really seen was Adam, calmly dealing with me, talking me down, making sure I was alright.

I can't believe that in just 4 and a half weeks I leave for America and have to say goodbye to my best friend. I am living in denial, I don't want to think about it but yet it is the only thing on my mind when I think of America.

Four months is a long time. I'm used to being able to run down the stairs with a grin on my face just to show him a photo I saw on twitter of a kitten and a rabbit asleep together, I'm used to lying next to him and talking into the night about politics and religion and life and us. I'm used to having him within arms reach, just a couple of words away from holding me.

As much as I am excited at the prospect of a transatlantic move to start a new life in the states, I am dreading the distance and the time spent apart.

This is what we wanted, it was what we decided from the moment we both knew we were going to spend a year abroad. We knew that to get the most out of the experience we needed to disregard our relationship and focus on what each of us wanted to do for a year. We both got our top choices, it wasn't like we were lumped with universities this far apart, and the year itself I am sure will be amazing, but that doesn't make it any easier.

I think as much as we have talked about "America" in a vague, noncommital way, neither of us have fully realised what next year means. I don't want to think of things as the last of anything, I don't want to spend my last weeks with Adam mourning and crying. But I'm finding it hard to feel okay about the distance.

If Adam was just my boyfriend, things would be different. I am not someone who needs a boyfriend. But Adam is my best friend, the person I clicked with from the first day I met him and before he was my boyfriend, he was always someone I could be myself around, someone who somehow found me funny and interesting, someone who could always make me laugh or beat me at whist. I have never before found someone that I have wanted to be around even when I don't want to come into contact with another human being ever again.

I know that he will have an awesome time in San Diego, and that I will have an equally awesome albeit very different time in Pennsylvania and that he can still make me laugh or smile through a text message or over a phone call. But not being able to hold him or be held for four months is going to be tough.

I'll miss the way he has to check his hair four thousand times before he leaves the house. I'll miss his silly little phrases and the way he can't stay still and somehow manages to move small objects from one side of the house to the other without noticing. I'll miss the beautiful smile that he somehow doesn't really like and the poses he pulls the minute you put a camera in his face. I'll miss his soft beard and the precision of his slightly curled mustache. I'll miss standing with my face pressed against his chest and feeling the weight of his chin on the top of my head. I'll miss the way he says my name whilst grinning and rolling his eyes as he talks me down from the irrational thoughts in my head.

I now have just one week left with him, in amongst trips to Spain and Amsterdam, festivals and spending time with family and it is terrifying. I will miss him so much.

Adam is the best person I've ever met. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I miss him after two weeks apart, let alone sixteen.

This is definitely the hardest part about next year; I don't want to start a new life without him. But I can and I will just as he can and he will, and time will move as it always does until we are back together in Canterbury for the final year of our degrees. Who knows where we'll be or who we'll be or what will have changed, but we will have got through it. And I'll look back to this summer and wish I was back here again, waiting for my life to change, to move to America, and that this was the hardest thing in my life, when graduation and jobs and real life pile on.

But for now I just wish I didn't have to say goodbye.

Goodbye North Lane, I'll miss your hideous yellow carpet and your broken letterbox. I'll miss your close proximity to Wetherspoons and the taxi rank. I'll miss your rocking basement and your broken hob. I'll miss my hideous lace curtains and the ridiculous amount of furniture in my room. I'll miss the gargantuan bathroom and the tiny congregating space in the landing where Adam challenges people to do pull ups. I'll miss the toasted sandwich maker we always thought we'd use.

It's been a pleasure.

We went and got ice cream and sat in the sunshine. Somehow between the bus stop and the ice cream hut I managed to lose my shoes, so we had to reward ourselves with sugar for traipsing all the way back to the beach entrance to find them. In case you are dying to know, I got a solero and Louise got a cornetto.



Then we went for a walk along the sea front past all the beach huts as the sky turned a bit more grey and foreboding.


We left just in the nick of time as it started to rain almost the minute we got on the bus! It was so nice to get out of Canterbury and show Louise some more of Kent. We grew up going on holidays to Cornwall and Norfolk and Wales, so it was great to reminisce at the seaside. Now that Lou works, I don't see nearly enough of her, and she isn't even going on our family holiday which is going to be weird. Growing up we were always really close and I have a whole bunch of memories of the imaginary games we used to play in our holiday cottages, entertaining ourselves for hours in our own little worlds. It's a bittersweet end of an era. We aren't children anymore, she has properly moved out and works full time, and I am moving to America. I will miss her a lot.

It was a lovely weekend to conclude my birthday celebrations, and so nice to spend some one on one time with someone I love so much. We don't see each other nearly enough, but when we do it's like we have never been a part. Even if we don't look like we are even related!

Thank you so much for coming to stay, Lou, I promise I will make it to Winchester soon!

I have now officially finished second year!! I have no more exams or essays or seminars or lectures until I start Lehigh in three months time, which is scarily close. As I only have such a short amount of time left here before America, I thought I'd use this time to fully explore Kent, using my bus pass to visit the many different beaches and places surrounding Canterbury.

Even the weirdly grassy beach.

And not the 2:1 we are all currently slowly dying for.

When I was at primary school, I always wanted to be 12. It seemed like a long way away, it was grownup, it sounded solid, when I was 12, everything would be alright. I would be almost finished with my first year of secondary school, I would belong there. When I was 12, I could get my ears pierced.

Then I turned 12, got my ears pierced, and promptly found 12 to be uninspiring. It turns out that you can't do everything when you are 12, you can't go out late at night and you don't feel grownup. So instead I wanted to be 16. When you are 16 you are the oldest in the school, you get to be a prefect and wear a blue polo neck, you get to dress up in tacky shiny dresses and pretend your american and go to prom. At 16 I would be fully grown, I wouldn't be a child anymore, I would feel in control.



Then I turned 16, wore a blue polo shirt, dressed up in a shiny dress, went to prom and lamented that, despite being fully grown, I was only 5'2" and decided that 16 wasn't all it was cracked up to be. I still felt young, I still felt small, I still felt like a child. So I wanted to be 18, I wanted to be an actual adult. I wanted to be able to vote in elections that I already felt passionate about, I wanted to be able to drink and go out clubbing. Two opposites of responsibility, but I wanted them both. At 18, I thought I would be settled, I thought I would go off to university and start the path to my dream job as a lawyer.


Then I turned 18. And it turns out that being able to vote was practically redundant until this month, and that drinking is much more fun when you are actually at university, and that, in fact, I wasn't supposed to go to university at 18. I turned 18 when my life was crazy. Being 18 was the least exciting, interesting or important thing that was going on in my life. Yes, I felt like an adult, but only because I was dealing with things that a child shouldn't have to. I suddenly didn't want to be 18 anymore, I didn't want to be grownup or have my life planned out. So I didn't look forward anymore.

I didn't look forward to the day I would be turning 21 because I thought it was redundant. 21 didn't mean anything to me. I was too old for counting birthdays and candles, too old to get excited about a day no different to the other 364.

Today I turn 21. And it does mean something. I feel older than I did at 18, so I know the importance of not always acting like I'm middle aged, that older doesn't mean boring or less fun, it means making the decision when to be old and when to be young. I feel more settled than I did at 18, because I know the importance of not having a fixed plan that you feel suffocated by, that being settled in yourself is more important than being settled in your career or your life path.

In the last three years I have travelled to Germany, Uganda, South Sudan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Lisbon, Spain, Prague and Budapest. I gave up my university place for a year where I had absolutely nothing planned. I have shot weddings and worked long days doing data entry in a room with no windows, I have moved to Kent and got a first for my first year at university, I have lost and gained someone I love, I have lost and gained my faith, I started writing poetry and became vice president of the Creative Writing Society, I have started to learn to sail. I got through the worst episode of my mental health in years, addressing and not ignoring my problems. I have been to festivals and actually camped!





And through the decisions that I have made between three years ago and today, 21 will mean something else; that I can legally drink once I move to America, a year out that I could only imagine when I applied to Kent in October 2012.

21 is going to be a good year, I can feel it in my bones. Moving to Pennsylvania, having the opportunity to really explore America, making a whole bunch of new friends. Like every year, I bet there will be ups and downs, probably some moments where I think I have made the worst decision ever, and other moments when I'm on top of the world, both figuratively and literally, but I feel like it's going to be an important one.

Now I'm older, I know that there is no need to look forward to a specific date, a specific year, or a specific age. There is no set time when I will be grownup and put together and suddenly have my life sorted. Turning 21 today, a day hideously situated in our exam period, where my main party man will be Chaucer himself, isn't ideal. But turning 21 isn't really a day. It isn't about whether enough people write on my wall or send me a text, it isn't about what I eat or where or the fact that I can't go out and celebrate properly with my friends. Adam went and bought me roses this morning, came upstairs and curled up in bed with me, gave me the camera that I have been wanting and made me feel special. And that was enough.

And besides, this day alone is irrelevant. All that matters is what happens in the next 365 days, and then the next, and then the next.

So I'm glad to be turning 21, I'm glad to have the privilege of living this long, to have done so much already and to have so much to look forward to. And I'm glad that there is a day, nestled amongst exam stress and visa applications, that makes me stop and think back over the years, one where I get to feel like a princess, even as I translate middle English on my own in a computer room. But more than that, I'm excited for what this year holds, where I will be in May 2016, which sounds so far away, for all the new stories and pictures I will have, for all the people I am going to meet and the places I am going to see. Because I have a feeling that this year is going to be good.